Chapter 17 — TEO
I’m early and I know I’m early and I don’t care.
Outside the treatment room, I’m humming the chorus of a song Zay sent last night, which is a thing I do now, apparently, walk around this building with his music in my head like it’s just a song and not a whole conversation we’re having underneath the one everyone else can hear.
The door’s open. He’s at the counter with his back to me, writing something in a chart, and I can see the pen from here.
The rollerball. The one with the firebird on the clip.
Not the cheap facility one with the crooked logo.
Mine. The one I gave him in December. He uses it every session and he has never once mentioned it and I have never once brought it up and the silence around that pen is one of my favorite things about us.
“Brooks.” I drop onto the table. “Berger gave Bar Mercato’s risotto a seven.”
“And?” He warms gel between his palms and presses into my shoulder.
His hands are warm the way they always are.
I have stopped trying to figure out where he stores the heat.
It’s just him. He’s warm where it counts and cool everywhere else and I could build a whole theory about that but I won’t, not out loud, because the theory would be about more than his hands and he’d know it.
“And a seven is an insult. That risotto is a nine minimum. His methodology has a bias toward cream sauces that compromises the entire framework.”
“Take it up with Berger.”
“I have taken it up with Berger. Berger says his methodology is sound.”
And then he laughs. I stop talking because talking would cover it up and I want to hear every second of it.
His face is open and his grin has gone soft at the edges and the room holds both of us in a version of this that he doesn’t usually let happen in this building.
Then he picks up the chart. Clicks the pen. Writes a number.
The moment ends the way his moments always end, with the professional version of him stepping back in. But he let it go longer than usual. He didn’t catch it. He didn’t kill it. That matters.
“We’re extending between sessions. Every five days instead of three.”
I knew this was coming. The shoulder is at ninety-six percent.
I can feel it in the range, in the way my shot has come back, in the fact that the compensating I was doing in September is gone.
The sessions are going to space out because I am getting better and that is the point.
The point was always getting better. The fact that getting better means fewer mornings in this room with his hands on me and his voice explaining what’s happening in my shoulder in that register that’s supposed to be clinical but is actually just unfair is not relevant.
It is not relevant and I am not going to think about it.
“Are you breaking up with me, Brooks?” I gasp like we haven’t been circling this for weeks.
“Medically.”
“That’s still a breakup.” I slide off the table. I pause in the doorway because the doorway is where I do my best work. The grin I give him is the one that’s just for him, the one I know he registers even when he pretends he doesn’t. “See you Thursday.”
“Thursday.”
Though we both know he’s coming over tonight.
The apartment gets the full treatment. Wine open on the counter.
The playlist sequenced so the first three tracks are his recommendations from last week.
Parker is on her armrest, asleep, completely unimpressed by my efforts to make a Tuesday night look effortless when it is, in fact, very effortful.
I rearranged the throw pillows. I will not think about the fact that I rearranged throw pillows for a man who will not notice the throw pillows.
The knock comes and I open the door and his shirt is on my floor before the door is fully closed because I do not believe in pacing.
“I have a theory,” I say against his mouth. His back is against my kitchen counter and his hands are on my waist and I can feel the tension in his fingers, the thing he holds at work letting go in increments. “About Tuesdays.”
“You have a theory about Tuesdays.”
“Tuesdays are the most underrated night of the week. Friday has pressure. Saturday has expectations. Tuesday has nothing. Whatever happens on a Tuesday is pure.”
“Keep going.” He pulls my shirt over my head and runs his hand down my chest and my stomach tenses under his palm because his hands are still warm and the warmth goes somewhere specific.
“Tuesday sex is the best sex because there’s no performance requirement. It’s not anniversary sex. It’s not makeup sex. It’s just...” He undoes my belt, slides the zipper down, and presses his knuckle against me through the fabric. “What was I...”
“Tuesdays.”
“Right…Tuesdays.” And then his fingers are in my briefs and his hand wraps around me and he just holds. No stroke. No movement. Just the pressure of his palm and his thumb at the base and the heat of his hand and I am going to lose my mind.
“Zay.”
“Mmm?”
“You can’t just hold me there. You have to do something.”
“I’m assessing.” I can feel his breath on my cheek and I want to turn into it.
“You are not assessing my dick right now.”
“I assess everything.” He strokes me once. Base to tip, slow, his thumb dragging through the wet at the tip, and my jaw drops and the second point of my Tuesday thesis comes out as air.
“That...” I swallow. “That was good. That was a strong opening.”
“I know.” He does it again, his lips against my jaw. My hip pushes into his fist and my head drops back against the cabinet.
I pull at his clothes between kisses, getting his belt undone because I refuse to be the only undressed person in any room.
His mouth moves down my chest. His tongue dragging down the center line, then his mouth lower.
My ribs, my stomach, the muscles pulling tight under his lips.
He bypasses my cock entirely and presses his mouth to my inner thigh and the sound I make is involuntary and undignified and I don’t care.
“You skipped...” The rest of the sentence doesn’t make it.
“Did I?”
I feel the smile as he presses his lips to my other thigh. His tongue along the crease where my leg meets my hip, his breath against me without touching, and there will be a reckoning.
“You know what you’re doing,” I tell him, and my voice is rough now, the Tuesday lecture long gone. “You know exactly what you’re doing and I want you to know that I see it and I’m keeping score.”
He takes me in his mouth, his lips working the head slow, his hand gripping the base.
He takes me deeper and finds the rhythm that turns my brain off, the specific thing he does with his mouth that reduces every sentence I’ve ever constructed to individual vowels.
My fingers twist in his hair. My thighs tense.
He pulls off. Kisses my hip.
“Oh, come on.” I bang my fists on the counter. I am a grown man banging his fists and I am fully within my rights.
“You were going to tell me about a pasta recipe earlier. You got interrupted.”
“You want me to talk about pasta? Right now? My dick is in your hand and you want a pasta lecture?”
“I want to hear about the pecorino ratio.” He strokes me once. Slow. “Talk.”
I exhale. “It’s a cacio e pepe variation. Nonna’s. You toast the pepper first in a dry pan.”
“Are you sure you want to be talking about Nonna right now?”
“No. Of course I don’t but you asked me about the pasta recipe!” I open my eyes and glare at him. “You are doing this on purpose.”
He raises his eyebrow at my then swirls his tongue over me and the dry pan is gone.
He takes me deep and holds me there and my hips push up and my hand grips his hair and the pasta is gone, every thought is gone, all of it replaced by the fact that this man’s mouth is on me and he is taking his time and I cannot form a complete thought.
The shaking starts in my thighs. My breathing is sharp and broken. I can feel myself climbing, the wave building, and his hand tightens in sync with his mouth and I’m almost there and he pulls off.
The sound I make could qualify as anguish.
“Turn around.”
I stare at him. Chest heaving. The room blurring at the edges. Then I turn for him. My face head drops and my shoulders are trembling and the commentary that’s been running all night just stops. My back is his. My body is waiting.
“Don’t move.” He touches my hands against the counter, and kisses the back of my neck.
I don’t move a muscle in the longest three minutes of my life.
I hear his footsteps come back to the kitchen.
I hear the click of the bottle, and then he places it next to me on the counter.
I feel the heat of his chest against my back, his lips on my shoulder. The one he works on three times a week.
Then I feel his finger presses into me and my body opens.
I can’t control the sound I make. He takes his time, opening me open with one, then two fingers.
Twisting, finding the angle, and my hips push back against his hand without my permission.
He curls and finds the spot and I shake without meaning to.
He does it again and my hands fist on the counter and I don’t say a word.
Because I don’t have the words for what he is making me feel.
He works me open until I’m in pieces and my whole body is slick and I am ready for him. He steps up closer and pushes his cock in slowly. My hand finds his on the edge of the counter. Our fingers lace together. Hold.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay.”
He starts to move. Warm and full and everywhere.
I meet him on every stroke, pushing back, and the words come back in fragments.
“Right there” and “harder” and “don’t stop” and then, quieter, almost lost, “This is so good.” Four words.
The truth underneath everything I’ve been saying, the truth I don’t dress up because it doesn’t need dressing.
His forehead presses between my shoulder blades. His hand tightens around mine. The pace builds. Deeper. My breathing gone sharp and fractured. My whole body clenches around him and the sound that comes out of me is raw and open and I don’t try to make it prettier than it is.
“Zay.” My voice breaking. “I’m close.”
“Touch yourself. Make yourself come. Let me feel it.” His mouth against my back.
His hips driving deep while my hand works my cock.
I come with his name in my mouth, my body pulling him in, shaking, and he holds me through it until I’m trembling and pulling my hand away.
He follows three strokes later, the sound of it pressed into my skin, and the warmth of him fills me and I hold still and let it.
We breathe. His hand is still holding mine. The room is quiet except for the low hum of the playlist on my phone. His forehead still between my shoulder blades. His pulse slowing against my back.
He slips out and I turn around and look at him.
“Seven out of ten.”
“You’re rating this? And I only get a seven out of ten?”
“The edging cost you points.”
“The edging is why you forgot the pecorino ratio.”
I open my mouth. Close it. “Fine. Eight out of ten.”
I wet a towel and when I finish cleaning myself up, I clean him up, carefully, the way you’re careful with a man who has been taking you apart piece by piece.
He watches me do it. Doesn’t say anything.
His eyes are soft and his breathing is settled and I don’t make a speech about what this means because it doesn’t need a speech.
It’s just what you do. You take care of the person who took care of you.
I pull him into me and settle against his chest. His mouth presses into my hair. My breathing slows against his shoulder. Tuesday night does what it does, which is nothing and also everything.